Here is another topic about the half dollar I thought of. I read a lot of times that the Mint wants to change the composition of the cent, nickel, dime, quarter, and half. So my question is, if halves are only being minted mainly for collectors and at a premium to buy circulation grade halves, why don't they just stop making them all together? Keep in mind that I DO NOT want that to happen, but if the Mint is so concerned in coin minting material costs, why not just ax the half? I mean, do they mint halves when supplies get low, just like how the BEP prints more $2 bills when the number of those get low? Just curious. Oh, and by the way, I was talking to a manager at my local Meijer, about the self checkouts not accepting halves. I asked if there were coin tubes in there for the coins, and one person said "no" which I find hard to believe, because, where do all of those coins go? Anyway, so this manager comes to me and says "Can I help you?" and I told him, "Yeah, I noticed that these self checkouts accept $2 bills and dollar coins, but do not accept half dollars, yet the half fits the slot perfectly, so is there possibly a way to add a coin tube, or reprogram the machines to take them?" And he said "I really don't know how that works, because we are not the ones who program the machines" so I said, maybe I should try to talk to the self checkout machine makers and see if the machines could be modified to take halves. I would also like to ask the self checkout manufacturer if they can program their machines to dispense $2s and halves, as I said. I know I'll probably lose, but my battle to get $2 bills and halves to circulate once more is not over yet. :hail:
The half dollar denomination is not used as often in commerce. This has periodically brought about discussions of possibly abolishing the denomination.
You got some good questions here Drago - i know my local Walmart's self check out doesnt take halves either. so i just dump my direct-ship dollars into it. the questions with halves is that habits are hard to break. i get a 1-2 boxes of halves a year thru my bank and i spend them. One cashier i see often says she takes them all home with her. I think its just a habit of people when people see them they think they are odd and want to hold on too them. Just like when the state quarters came out. Seems like alot of people kept every one they got. Now its just the opposite. i would just keep spending the halves. your 2nd question was - So my question is, if halves are only being minted mainly for collectors and at a premium to buy circulation grade halves, why don't they just stop making them all together? i know for the mint, its business at usual. They are making money by making money. i would guess with the halves they are making 1-2 millions dollars just for making them. according to the report http://news.coinupdate.com/us-mint-circulating-coin-shipments-fall-0123/ i would est. it cost about 20 cents to make each half and then they sell them for .65 to .82 each. so do the math on how much they make and sell. Just like the dirct ship dollars- the report says it cost 30 cents to make a dollar coin and the mint ships them in lots of 250 for the direct ship program. i estimate thats a 175 dollar profit so they can eat the cost of the shipping. just a thought Snowman
Conspiracy: I believe there are plans to pull the paper dollar. They are still making $2 and halves building up a stockpile. Once the dollar bill is pulled, the halves and $2's will circulate and the mint/BEP will not need to make any for a couple years thus saving $$.
This is a little out of date, but these were the cost in the spring of 2008. Penny - 1.26 cents Nickel - 7.7 cents Dime - 4 cents Quarter - 10 cents Dollar (Coins) - 16 cents updated from an August 2009 article. The penny and the nickel are the only U.S. coins that are worth less than their manufacturing and material costs. For instance, in FY-08 it cost 4.36 cents to make a dime, and only 29.6 cents to make a golden dollar
Why make something, That costs more to make then its worth?? You really have to question the logic there ")
Only the cent and nickel cost more than they are worth depending on the price of metal that day). The other coins offset it and then some.
I thought that if the paper dollar were pulled, that the $2 bill and the dollar coin would circulate better, but would push the half even further into obscurity (if thats the word for it) because the dollar coin would be hogging the coin slot in cash drawers intended for halves. Now, if they got rid of the cent, both the half and the dollar could have a place, but then, how much longer until a $2 coin boots the half out, yet again? I don't know if the government would go so far as to eliminate the nickel any time soon, since they'd have to get rid of quarters as well since you could not make change for them, and replace them with the "fifth" (reissue the 20 cent coin)
The math just doesn't work out, I'm afraid.... There are about 10 billion $1 notes currently outstanding in circulation (see data here). In contrast, there've only been about 1.1 billion $2 FRNs printed from Series 1976 to date, with the most recent printing (in 2006) accounting for about 0.2 billion (see here). Last year's total mintage of dollar coins was about 0.4 billion; and of halves, about 0.004 billion (here). These numbers are utterly negligible next to the quantities that would be needed if the paper $1 were ever discontinued. If/when the Powers That Be finally decide to kill off the $1 FRN, it's not the sort of thing they'll be able to do conspiracy-wise, without advance warning. Something on the order of 20 to 30 billion dollar coins would be needed to meet circulation demand (since coins circulate differently than bills, spending much more time idle in vending machine hoppers, change jars, and the like), and the great majority of them would have to be struck before the dollar bill was discontinued (since paper currency wears out so quickly). The Mint would have to work overtime, probably churning out more dollar coins than all other denominations combined for a couple of years running, in order to build up enough of a stockpile to enable the changeover. That nothing of the kind is currently happening, the production figures make abundantly clear....
